Confessions of an Art Addict by Peggy Guggenheim

Pierre’s Bar. He told us not to waste our money. Suddenly he chucked me under the chin and said, ‘Peggy is a wonderful girl.’
    When we went back to the Belmont-Plaza he asked Max if he did not want to sleep with ‘his sister’, saying it was perfectly safe, as he would be sitting outside Max’s door all night with a gun in his pocket, guarding not only him but a G -man in the room opposite. I declined his offer.
    The next morning, he turned Max over to an official of Pan-American Airways. The minute we landed at Ellis Island, Max was taken away and imprisoned. I was quite frantic for three days, waiting on the Island, where I went every day, expecting to be called as a witness. Max enjoyed himself immensely on the island and was not in the least worried, but I never saw him again until he was released. Jimmy, his son, came to the hearing with a letter from the Museum of Modern Art, and Max was released at once. When I told Max that he was a baby deposited on my doorstep, he said, ‘You are a lost girl.’ I knew he was right, but was surprised that he realized it.
    I had no idea how famous Max was, and it was great fun going around with someone so well known. He was also perpetually encountering people whom he had known in concentration camps. To me these people seemed like ghosts, but to Max they were very real, and he always mentioned the dreadful camps where they had been together as though he were talking about Deauville,Kitzbuhl or St Moritz.
    Max loved to wear fantastic clothes. In Europe he wore a black cape, which was very romantic and suited him perfectly. In Marseilles once, when I was buying a little sheepskin jacket, Max was so jealous that I had to order one for him as well. The furrier was very surprised, but he made it, and when Max wore it he looked like a Slav prince. I also gave him my mother’s lorgnon, which made him look very aristocratic.
    While Max was on Ellis Island I went to see Breton. He was installed in an apartment in Greenwich Village which Kay Sage Tanguy had rented for him for six months. It was very comfortable, but looked unlike his usual surroundings. There were no modern paintings and none of his collection of primitive art, which he must have missed terribly. He seemed worried about the future, yet in spite of this he was determined not to learn a word of English. Breton was anxious to get Max back into his group again, as Max was his biggest star and he had lost him during the Eluard crisis, when the Surrealists had split into two camps, Breton leading one and Paul Eluard the other. The Surrealists were always playing cat and mouse, and it was quite easy for Max to be seduced again. The person Breton objected to most was Dali, because of his commercial and vulgar attitude towards publicity. So Max would not allow me to see him. I promised Breton two hundred dollars a month for a year to put his mind at rest until he knew what he would do in New York. Later,he got a job broadcasting on the Free French radio.
    In New York Breton continued to lead his usual life as much as he could. It was, however, in the home of Mr and Mrs Bernard Reis that he had the freest hand. They were art patrons, and she was a marvellous cook. They gave many parties and invited all the Surrealists, whose art reviews they sponsored, especially Triple V. Mrs Reis loved to fill her home with Surrealists and let them do what they liked. Breton took advantage of this to make us all play his favourite game, Le Jeu de la Verité. We sat around in a circle while Breton lorded it over us in a true schoolmasterly spirit. The game was rather Freudian. It was a sort of psycho-analysis done in public. The worse things we exposed, the happier everybody was. One was asked what one would do about sex if one’s husband went to war, and how long one could go without it, or what one’s favourite occupation was. I once asked Max if he preferred to make love at the age of twenty, thirty,